Week Eight Of Upgrades And Acceleration
Oh GHOSH! A lovely wise geezer, who once worked in the casino trade and would have to transport big wads of cash about from London to their Brighton branch in the dead of night in a great big Yankee Camaro, once told me, ‘You can’t fall in love with a car, Sir!’ As he was actually playing devil’s advocate and suggesting that I did NOT keep on spending money on my old Volvo estate at his garage.
Larry is his name and Darryl’s Volvo (named for his lad, in fact) is the most awesome Volvo fixits in London, in the after-the-main-dealer market and where mine has been serviced for two hundred thousand miles-plus. They are the nuts. (And bolts.) It was clear that after all the family holidays, all that amazing ‘˜transit in less than it should have been’ and all the lovely places we had been in it, I was a bit smitten. I hadn’t really thought about it until I met the chap who drove one for the Queen and admitted that he admired mine, at two hundred thousand miles. A few years later, the same dude, now a proper friend, bought me a 250,000+ miles sticker to go in the window. It sits (sat) opposite the one from the Kelpies, that we were among the very first to see, on our Scottish jaunt last year.
We spoiled ourselves and stayed a night or two in the Great Langdale Hotel’s room 274, which is genuinely next to the river. Close enough to fish trout outta the beck from your balcony. I filmed a Water Ouzel, or Dipper from there as well. But for a change, I digress. Our old heap was positively, definitely sneered at in the car park by another guest. (Who was in a cheaper room, I PROMISE!)
Anyway, I had been looking for a replacement car and agonising about what to do with the old girl. For, like any old lady, she had developed what the medics call Multiple Pathologies. Five screens, one clutch, three exhausts (cat-back only) four sets of pedal rubbers, a rear side window where I threw a Rockford Bass Box into it, and two new driver’s door seal rubber sets were all consumables for me, as was shredding the upholstery with my bum.
But I couldn’t stop the radiator system from leaking. The oil burning through the Turbocharger and leaking gently onto my drive was OK But the new radiator, recently fitted at huge cost was not the issue. She sprang a final, leak-to-the-death, yet again, indicating clogged arteries and so I filled the radiator one last time and drove her to be scrapped with the new one to drive away in.
It was an emotional day. I shot my own dog as they Yanks say. For I disinstalled the radio, two microphones and the Target Blue Eye, myself in a few minutes. I used the brute force and Leatherman approach and felt bad at the mess she was left in. I wanted to keep the gear knob that I had shined so well
But the new one is so far beyond my experience as to be a different creature altogether. I have had a good go and even been out working for the Anglers Mail in it, complete with some quasi-off roading. Seven sets of fishing lakes’ bumpy muddy tracks and even a couple you would be afeared to drive without 4×4.
I think I’m in love. Again.
Adam Rayner On Line Editor